Receipts, for example, are important documents in terms of accounting, and thus it is necessary to be able to confirm each piece of information such as when each of receipts was printed, whether the receipt was actually printed, and whether the receipt was validly printed.
In an insurance office, for example, numerous receipts are issued to policyholders. A high-speed printer is utilized for the issuance of receipts, and thus it is necessary to be able to confirm which bitmap data stored in a buffering memory of a print engine has been printed.
In a host computer and a printer, an SNMP manager and an SNMP agent are equipped respectively, enabling a trap-notifying function from the SNMP client to the SNMP manager in response to detection of an error such as no paper, insufficiency of toner, or power-off.
However, since a coverable region of the SNMP client is a section relating to hardware of the printer, the SNMP client cannot keep track of whether which page of which job has been actually printed or not.
J.P. No. 2002-189638-A discloses a configuration in which log is registered directly onto a log managing server from a printer, and a plurality of the registered log such as the number of printed pages, scanned times, and communication time are managed by the unit of a printer, a user, or both of them grouped.
Additionally, J.P. No. 10-320147-A, referred as document 2 hereinafter, discloses a configuration in which completion of a job is detected when a print-out event occurs in a printer 4 and information of the job completion is transmitted to a print-demanding host on job completion.
However, neither of the above-mentioned documents discloses a way to collect the logs for which of the pages of a job has been actually printed, thus neither is practical because managing trace of issuing important certificates in detail may fail even if these inventions are applied for managing trace of issuing certificates.
Besides, neither of the above-mentioned documents discloses a way to collect the logs regarding the contents of a file of the job, thus managing trace of issuing certificates cannot be efficiently performed even if these inventions are applied.
Moreover, the document 2 performs transmission of information of job completion to a print-demand host instead of to a log server; this aspect also limits the utilization of log.
Furthermore, although the document 2 does not mention at which of a control board or a print engine board logs are kept, since the print engine board is specifically for a print engine, it is reasonable to consider that a paper-discharge sensor is connected to the control board from which the print engine board receives data, and the logs of completion of paper-discharge are kept on the control-board side. In a case where memory devices are located also on the print engine board for high-speed printing and bitmap data for printing plural pages are temporarily stored thereon, merely detecting a discharge on the control-board side does not hold information of which pages have been printed; therefore, such a printer cannot be applied for an accurate system for managing trace of issuing certificates.